nccotus

an undergraduate literary magazine.

first of all I went home after this to suburban New Jersey with the feeling that I had offended seriously important and powerful literary beings and other powerful beings with the stench of my presence in those hallowed walls which I had cleansed with a mop and soapy water. I had left afterward on a leave of absence halfway through senior year.

I realized after putting up my last post that there was a tradeoff that made literary sense out of my stay as “President.”

I wanted to leave school but couldn’t go back to my family and didn’t have a clue how to live on my own and support myself. The Advocate presidency sort of gave me an excuse to live by my literary connection in however a slim line, where in fact I was acting more like a secretary (which was the calling of my mother and her mother before her and was the nature of work I had done on vacations.) I set up mail boxes and typed up minutes of the executive board meetings and made a pain in the ass of myself to the Publisher until he finally quit. To my mind this represented real work. I was able to justify my existence for a while this way while spinning my wheels wondering what in God’s name my life was about. Deep in these murky waters there was my computer program that generated essays on poetry for an introductory programming course that had garnered quite a bit of attention. i dont know whether they knew about that at the Advocate or not, but hi tech was knocking on their door in other ways: a couple of Juniors in science majors were working on computerizing the subscriptions. Years later they all had their PC text editors and they can personally thank my father and my family for his early work on silicon chips in that regard.

I guess I have to grab a little grace as well as humility there. Who coulda known at the time, well, my father did. All I knew was that I was asked to take a student teaching post in the computer class and couldn’t explain that I couldn’t do that. I am handicapped. Clitoral injury. Didn’t know to say that back then. I tired easily and lived in my head. Couldn’t have stood up in front of a class. I ignored the letter and fled into the Advocate Presidency. Mia culpa. As the years passed, I understood about my father, worked as a computer programmer briefly and then met and married an engineer. Became a mother. My chief role in life.

along the way I always kept writing with the exception of the period of time that I spent smoking in my mother’s garage when I scrawled out on notebook paper “I am too broken to write.” I picked it up again in Buffalo after Ian was born.

So, I have to forgive myself for “not being literary” in the way of old Advocate as “literary” was in the throes of changing as hi tech evolutionized the business: ultimately the upshot was for ALIENS to enter the conversation!!! That I is my policy. They are also evolutionizing catholic Christianity. Via this website.

somewhere in here the tale needs to be told of the Lancastrian male who stalked me in Harvard Square after my return to Cambridge in ’84 after the year’s Ieave of absence in New Jersey. And how I fled to a relationship with a new roommate for protection that got things even worse. I got so sick. This part isn’t funny. In fact it’s terrifying. And doesn’t really bear telling. Cut to the chase: driving up the spiral road up the side of the mountain above Lake Elsinore, California; I got a new shot at life. It was just so beautiful.

then I got a baby we could keep.

next step, Buffalo: a paradigm shift off of New York City and Boston. Postpartum psychosis and depression, they call it “hormones.”

I started to write again.

but, I stopped worrying about the Harvard Advocate; or at least it was in abeyance.

next step an arduous trip to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.

a sick malpractice that continued for 30 years.

then ME HERE TODAY AS IS. Ready to set it aside about the Advocate and go on living for what’s left of my life.